


Everyone Who Isn't Us

by theswearingkind



Category: Spartacus Series (TV), Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, Spartacus: Vengeance
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Character Study, Gen, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-17
Updated: 2013-09-17
Packaged: 2017-12-26 21:01:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/970243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theswearingkind/pseuds/theswearingkind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is basest stupidity to live for honor, Ashur thinks, when honor is no guarantee of life.  </p><p>Fuck honor.  Survival is the only cock he sucks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everyone Who Isn't Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kymericl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kymericl/gifts).



> I chose not to use archive warnings for this fic. Please see the end notes for specific trigger warnings.
> 
> I owe the HUGEST thanks to static_abyss, who offered detailed, thoughtful feedback about this fic when I was too deep into it to be able to see it properly anymore, and who also grabbed hold of this story with both hands and shook it until many of the extraneous semicolons fell out :D All remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> Thanks also to kymericl, whose gorgeous, thoughtful artwork gave me the chance to write the Ashur fic that's been rolling around in my head since the first time I watched the show. You can see hir piece [here, where it is prompt #24](http://sparty-reverse.livejournal.com/2788.html).
> 
> Title shamelessly stolen from _Game of Thrones_ , which somehow ended up giving me inspiration for two of my three SRBB fics even though I don't really like the show. The quote, if you're unfamiliar with it, is: "Everyone who isn't us is an enemy."

The gods look down and judge men’s deeds, Ashur has been told, weighing good against ill in eternal measurement of man’s worth. But why should that matter? The men of the ludus know better than to waste time on the gods, masters crueler than any before whom they must bow and scrape and speak the name of _dominus._ Their masters at least are human flesh, with minds and hearts and bodies that can be molded, can be led—can, with proper care, be broken. The gods are only indifferent, eternal, beyond reprisal. They cannot be toppled from their thrones as a man might be, cannot be turned to suit any man’s purpose. 

The gods who rule the sands inside the arena also rule the world outside of it. Those same gods saw Ashur into slavery for a crime not worth the telling of it. They have never intervened in his life but to put him on his knees and force cock up ass.

In place of the gods, the men of the ludus have their brotherhood, their vows of loyalty, their visions of glory won through battle and blood upon the sands. They have their dreams of rectitude and principle, of fucking _honor_ —honorable fights, honorable lives, and, one day, honorable deaths. These are the idols they worship, and Ashur knows, as those chained to him refuse to, that these idols are as false and cold as all the gods in the heavens. 

What cares Ashur for honor, when honor would have left him dead a dozen times over? What good to cleave to the honorable path, to have men speak his name with respect and not with basest loathing, when he could only hear their words from the afterlife and gain nothing by them? 

It is basest stupidity to live for honor, he thinks, when honor is no guarantee of life.

Fuck honor. Survival is the only cock he sucks. 

*

Friendship is a luxury in the House of Batiatus, but it comes especially dear in the ludus. It is a place where a man may at any moment have to fight a brother to the death, force blade into belly or spear into side. Ashur well knows the cost of advancement. He would kill them all and lose no sleep if doing so brought him one step closer to the sands, where there is coin and favor to be won, and afterward, all the cunt and fame that either can buy.

In spite of this, he finds himself almost sorry to have lost Indus. The man has the blind, stupid faith of those who see the world only as it is, not as it can be. Ashur stands taller beside him, the bright and twisting paths of his own varied possibilities shining all the brighter next to the idiot’s straightforward dullness. 

But Indus is a casualty of the war that is his life, and a necessary one, at that. Ashur cannot afford to be a man given to wasting regret on what must be done. He is no fucking imbecile, trusting in his dominus for protection, should they fail in their task. If Vettius and his men should overpower them, should catch glimpse of his and Dagan’s faces, their punishment would make the mines seem as much reward as the Elysian Fields are to the vaunted dead.

For his success, Dominus promises ample reward, and Ashur would have, _will_ have, all that superior Roman fuck plans to give, and more besides. And what is one death, even that of one he would call brother, compared to all that has been stolen from Ashur? Compared to all that by rights should be his?

He would have had to kill the man someday. Without Ashur’s help, he would likely have already been dead.

Ashur makes the death as quick as he can, slitting the throat with a practiced economy of motion, and allows himself half a moment of regret. For all his stupidity, the brute has done Ashur no harm.  
* 

When he is denied the test—the _true_ test, not the skulking, bloody machinations of Dominus’ scheme of advancement and revenge—he feels it as a blow, hard as any he has received in training and twice as sure to leave lingering bruise. He neither wants nor needs the love of men too drunk on their own cocks to recognize his worth. But there was ease to be found on the other side of the gauntlet, momentary fucking pause from the eternal cloud of piss and shit they rain down upon him, their not-quite-brother. Never to recite the oath, never to speak aloud for all to hear the words that would brand his tongue as surely as Doctore’s hot iron brands his arm—

Ashur does not need their love, but even grudging acceptance would have been as balm to wound. Better almost to have forgone the mark altogether than to have earned it thus. Unbranded, he might one day have risen high enough in their eyes for tolerance. But now, he bears permanent reminder, a scar to match their own that will not let them forget: Ashur did not pass the test nor swear the oath. Never mind that he was not given fucking _chance_ , that he did only what was required of him, that what Dominus commands must be to them as law. They will remember only what he did not do, and he will never rise above the weight of deeds undone. 

These men are his brothers, but he is not theirs.

So be it.

*

Dagan proves a betrayal. 

What would he have been without Ashur to give voice to his words, to translate the Romans’ commands into mother tongue? Nothing but a mewling babe cast into the dirt and grime of the ludus, absent any hope of advancement. All his vaunted giant’s strength would soon have been no more than fodder for the mines. 

And this is how Ashur is repaid for his service: thrown coin hardly sufficient for a cask of wine and loose, disinterested cunt, while Dagan takes twice as much as though it is no more than his fucking due, as though Ashur has not all but carried the man on his shoulders. 

Dagan fucks Ashur simply by existence. When opportunity presents itself, Ashur is only too happy to return favor. 

The fat Roman shit would have had one of them, no matter what words Ashur spoke or Dagan believed. If Ashur seizes chance for further amusement, spurs the lecherous old fuck’s cock on to greater roughness than he might have offered on his own, it is a thing of little matter. They are all forfeit this night, by fist or sword or cock, this night when mad Gannicus with all his pride must stand idle while Tullius rains blows upon him for his master’s offenses, when the Beast of Carthage is brought to heel and must present ass like the fucking bitch he is. For this one night, it counts as blessing to be pushed aside.

Ashur would wipe slate clean after that night, one bad turn matched by another, but Dagan does not hold it so. Ashur knows, then, that he will never be safe so long as the man yet remains in the ludus, where he might with but bare minimum of forethought see Ashur dead and bear no punishment for it. Titus’ planned contests between the gladiators trained under his watch and those acquired under his son’s only brings the matter to head more quickly than it might otherwise have done. 

Blinding the man is less a plan than it might have seemed to those who watch them. Ashur roars with victory nonetheless, bellowing his own name to the skies as assuredly as though he had never felt a moment’s doubt of who would emerge champion from this contest. If his heart races inside his chest and his arms tremble under the weight of the sword as Dagan is led away, what of it? What is Dagan, after all, but one more fuck brought low by honor, now to rot below ground, another slave destined to die in the mines. 

The victory is all that matters, another match behind and another day’s fight ahead.

Crixus is worse, a man whose strength of arms might have met the strength of Ashur’s mind, their purposes equally matched: a true brother. But he will not fight at Ashur’s side when the cocksucker Auctus and shit-eating Barca attack Ashur for making a meal of their beloved pets, and soon Ashur sees the Gaul growing cold, all of Ashur’s overtures of friendship thrown back in his face like piss in the wind. 

Ashur does not know how far the man has grown from him until they stride forth before the looming crowd at the new-built arena and he loses the Gaul in the swarm of bodies and blood that spills forth. In this ring of fire Ashur has but one single task to occupy mind, and he throws himself toward it with abandon. All his machinations here come to naught: he will live or die by his own hand, and he does not mean to die. 

Dagan he kills in a blaze of fury and pride, a final blow to finish off the fucking one-eyed traitor, that fuck who would have stolen Ashur’s place in Batiatus’ house. He knows himself, finally, a gladiator on the sands in name and deed. No longer is he the easy choice for whipping boy among the men, but one of the last to stand in heated contest. 

In his mercy and joy, he offers the Gaul chance once more—to be brothers true, to join him in claiming title of champion from those who never have deserved it. To become champion, Ashur knows, is not merely to fight, and to win; it is to make others lose, and this, Gannicus would never learn. He is too easy in his ways, too in love with glory and honor and the warm clasp of a friend’s hand. A true champion conquers and claims, and mad, laughing Gannicus does not have the instinct for destruction.

With the quick flash of sword into Ashur’s flesh and bone, Crixus proves himself only too adept.

*

Days pass before medicus declares him fit to stand, and even then, it is only with aid of brace strapped to leg. The bone is still visible through Ashur’s skin, and Ashur knows that though he can walk enough to serve his masters, he will likely never be what he was. 

Years of piss and shit pass as he waits to take single step under his own power. In that time, he does what he must to secure position in a house that has sent men to the mines for no more coin than might purchase watered wine. To number among the house slaves when he once was counted gladiator—it is bitter fruit from poisoned tree, but that is the way of a world that has fucked him since before he first drew breath.

They are long years, and painful ones, with naught to mark the separation of days except a thousand little slights passing unremarked, piling one atop the next in ever-increasing numbers. 

Then the Thracian comes to Capua, and Ashur has only to watch as the long-sleeping world catches fire.

*

In the years since Gannicus won his rudus and set foot to path, no longer a slave but a free man, Crixus has reigned undisputed champion among the gladiators of the House of Batiatus, his victories in the arena placing him about the reach of any but his masters. Ashur may sometimes hold favored position by Batiatus’ side, but he cannot hope for revenge on the man who crippled him while the crowd yet roars the name of the Undefeated Gaul and the domina takes him between her thighs in open secret. 

Things change, as perhaps they must, because of cunt. That ruination of all men.

Ashur has noticed her, of course. It is rare man indeed who has not turned eyes toward domina’s dark, lovely body slave, her sometimes-pet. But she is held apart from the other house wenches, separate and untouchable until domina deems her otherwise. 

When Crixus makes bargain to purchase necklace, Ashur does not for a moment believe it a gift for the domina, but until he catches sight of the girl with her legs spread astride the Gaul, he had not thought that _she_ might be the champion’s favorite. 

When Batiatus offers him the gift of any woman in the house, he knows his course. The girl lies cold and motionless beneath him, but he finds he does not mind. She is like Auctus’ birds that he devoured long ago, worth nothing in herself, but sweetened in flavor by the knowledge of who it is he takes her from. 

The shit stole Ashur’s leg and position as gladiator when Ashur had offered him nothing but kindness. He now steals the man’s heart and balls with but a single thrust of his cock.

To place his hands upon the girl in the presence of his one-time brother, to see the dawning comprehension of Ashur’s deeds rise upon the man’s face in horror and disbelief, is pleasure greater than any he has known since he stood upon the sands. That alone would remove the sting from blow delivered by the Crixus’ fist. But with consequences drawn by the fool’s rash act, Ashur finds that plan unfolds better than even he himself might have devised.

 _You have made me your greatest enemy,_ he thinks, vicious and satisfied, as they drag the man away. _I, who should have been your brother. All this is your doing. I but respond in kind._

Later, he stands beside Batiatus on the terrace and watches as they tie Crixus to post, now a broken thing, fallen to ruin for a cause of no worth. He is bruised and bloodied, his gladiator’s smugness gone from him. Tears as hot and copious as any woman’s carve tracks through his tanned, dust-covered face. 

Ashur looks down at him and is surprised to feel a moment of—not regret, but something like it; disappointment, perhaps, that man he once thought almost equal to himself shows himself of so little note in the end. 

*

He feels no pain for the death of the fucking Roman hordes, nor for that of the man he for long and bitter years called _dominus_ , but it does put kink in long-cherished dreams of improvement. News of Glaber’s return to Capua falls welcome on his ears, all the effort of sustaining life in the mad, wounded bitch suddenly turned from burden to opportunity. He learned Oenomaus’ whereabouts within three days’ time of slaughter, but there was no call for revelation when he himself stood equally condemned for assault upon masters. It is time now for discovery to be made, if the man has not already gained longed-for end in the pits. 

It is time for Ashur to reveal, to the new-made praetor and to Oenomaus, too, how deeply Ashur’s mark is still carved in all things from that house where so many met their end.

He cuts Batiatus’ mark from his flesh with blade too dull for the task, but this too is a thing of necessity. Ashur holds firm to purpose that has guided him all the years he has spent in bondage. He will not be a man to regret what must be done. 

He speaks empty words of the gods to strengthen his own tether to the false oracle, and from her to Glaber. He shadows fucking Marcus through forest where the Thracian yet clamors for blood because Glaber commands it. He attempts to pierce Roman soldiers’ arrogance with knowledge of gladiators’ greater worth because doing so may aid Glaber, in the long run. Because Glaber is all his hope of advancement now.

But still Glaber doubts him, making mockery of his worth, as though Ashur is not the better of any man who stands among the Romans. It is only when the man presents sword and challenges Ashur to show his training that Ashur finally understands.

Glaber is not Batiatus. What he requires of Ashur is different. It is through blood alone that he will climb in the praetor’s estimation, and he welcomes challenge. 

Though Ashur makes show of uncertainty as he grips sword in hand and allows the boy soldiers their few blows, within him his blood sings. These Romans have never understood that it is no shame to fall, if in falling one may deny another the opportunity to rise—a lesson well worth the learning, he thinks, in the Senate or the sands.

After Ashur dispatches the Roman soldiers, Glaber looks on him with new eyes, and Ashur feels his heart rise up to meet the man’s words. The praetor is right, after all; there are many things that ambitious men must embrace. They are such men, Ashur of Syria and Glaber of Rome, two sides of a single coin. And who might have thought it all those years ago, that not Indus or Dagan or Crixus, nor any of the men of the ludus, but Gaius Claudius Glaber, would prove his truest brother?

A serpent, Doctore called him once, and perhaps it is true. A serpent has a stinging, flickering tongue and mouth of dust; it must crawl on its belly and look up to all others. But in its lowness it may strike, and have not great men been brought to their knees by wounds inflicted by those thought too low to cause pain? The Greeks teach still of brave and noble Achilles, perfect in all things, but a fool for love, and toppled by a blow to the heel. Another cripple, Ashur thinks with pride and bitterness equally mixed, but not one who survived his crippling. 

Crixus thought himself the greatest of the men, a gladiator to best all others, but in the end Ashur bested him without laying hand upon him, with a touch the man could not even feel. He had only to watch as the fool signed death warrants for himself and his whore.

Like the serpent Ashur sheds his skin, begins anew. He has shed the Ashur whose thoughts extended only as far as the sands of the arena, his small-time dreams of standing always one step behind Batiatus, of being the puppet-master working the strings. He is a new Ashur now, a man to be feared as well as reviled.

Titus Batiatus was loved by his slaves and yet died gasping, bloodied and beaten by games he never thought to have to play. The men hated his son but never feared him, and that, Ashur thinks, is what doomed Quintus, in the end.

When Ashur rules, his own men will make no similar mistake.  
*

What was the girl to him, after all, but a means to an end, a piece to maneuver in the great battlefield lain out in his mind? He plans his moves as though he has command of battalions, but in the still and solitary darkness of his heart, he knows the truth: he is all his generals and foot-soldiers both, _imperator_ and slave at once, his greatest asset and his meanest weakness dwelling together within him. He views the world through eyes that see beyond the furled edges of the map, into lands these great Roman men will never conquer. He uses his mind as though he is himself an oracle, always able to know the years ahead of other men. The strength in his limbs is nothing, easily tamed by sword or whip, but his _mind_ —that grows sharper for every day he lets them think him the contented fool, eager only to serve his masters and, like a dog, fetch up the crumbs from beneath the table at whose head he rightfully should sit. 

He is done with the dungeons. When next he takes the woman, it will be in the bed where her dead husband used to fuck her, where she felt her power most great and saw fit to rule her betters, as though she were not as much whore as every other woman. It will be with his face clean-shaven and his hair shorn in the style of that great dim brute she remade to suit her Roman notions of civility before she moaned for his cock and demanded his seed. Ashur will fuck her until she learns to like it, and he will fill her with the sons she gave no other man. He will let her call him husband, but in her heart of hearts she will know that he is _dominus_ now, and it is only his great and twisted love for the sands of this house he will make his own that will allow the word to lay silent once more upon her tongue.

He may have her say it, all the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warnings for non-explicit (but very much present) rape/non-con, canon-typical violence, canonical character death, and misogyny. I don't offer feel the need to state that a character's opinions and thought processes in no way reflect my own, but please know that these most definitely do not.


End file.
